As many of you regulars may have noticed, TerrainlinX and robocutter support have quickly become the new standards to which everything previously released is measured. This has spawned a number of fanbased conversion efforts of older modelsets to the new formats. Fan-based Conversion

We’ve weighed a number of issue over the past few weeks dealing with fanbased conversions of older modelsets (both TerrainlinX and Craftrobo conversions). We even went as far as drafting a submissions guide, which set a number of benchmarks and policies to deal with such submissions in a group context. In the end though we realized that there were simply too many technical/procedural hoops to jump through in order to make it all happen successfully. Not only would users be required to do 100% complete submissions but they would have to meet a stringent set of visual and organizational standards. The list simply became too long, too complicated and there were too many points along the path where things could go terribly wrong. The LAST thing we wanted to do was create a situation that would have us rejecting a number of submissions because they did not meet set standards or policies. Or worse yet, creating resentment from our most cherished fans because of our quality assurance standards. Without the time and resources in our corner to monitor, help convert or “fix” problem spots, these issues are very hard to navigate.

We realize that many have already embarked on partial conversions (both in the open and in private) and that there is ample demand for specific conversions. Our challenge was in finding a way to navigate that situation without devaluing our older catalog (items which have not passed their natural sales curve) or creating a chaotic, unmonitored sharing situation with variable quality.

Official Conversions

Our solution is to launch an “official” conversion effort by bringing on additional staff and to dictate which modelsets will be converted and when. These conversions will be vetted to our current high standards and will be fully TerrainlinX/Craftrobo compliant. We’ve enlisted the forums very own Tomas “menace”Mennes to help us get our feet wet on conversions (since he did such a gob smacking job with Matt’s Cathedrae: viewtopic.php?t=7777&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 . He along with our beta crew and GSD Saint (Highland Piper), will embark on solving some of the more challenging conversion efforts. In the end we’ll be presenting you with fully compliant, shiny new conversions of a carefully chosen group of our best sellers. What is being converted?

We are still weighing the pros and cons to specific official conversions. There are many products in our catalog which simply do the job they were intended to do without need of conversion. Because of the time and energy involved to successfully convert a modelset, conversions will initially be targeted on a case-by-case basis. The whole ball of wax comes down to which sets would benefit from a reintroduction most without killing the current popularity or intended usage of the original. In the short term “Cathedrae Noctis” is a certainty. Beyond that we will not announce additional conversions until we are actively in the process of making them happen.

That’s the story. Although it’s not a perfect solution, I think it’s pretty exciting stuff overall  Our concern at the end of the day is that customers are receiving the highest quality product possible.

**UPDATE**

Some confusion and concerns regarding the official policy. Here's an exchange that I hope will further clear the air...

Squirmydad wrote:

Honestly, I interpreted that policy declaration as a cease and desist too. I had four pages of props to go in Swampworks, I had followed all the guidelines you'd set out for conversions, and that policy statement felt like a torpedo hit. Perhaps a slight rewording of the policy is in order to make it more clear what is and isn't acceptable. As it stands, and the way I, and apparently a few others, understand it, it says "No craft-robo or TLX mods will be accepted. Period."

I wasn't trying to convert SW over to TLX, just making it all Craft-Robo compatible. I reworked all of the ground tiles to be TLX compatible, but that was only for personal use as I am not a file-sharer.

I know you aren't interested in almost complete conversions so I will see if I can find time and enthusiasm this week to finish making SW Craft-Robo compatible and send it to you for review.

Eric

Hey Eric,

Yes we're really discussing two seperate issues here but they fall under the same umbrella: CraftRobo conversions (which still require manipulating graphics to fit the safe cut zone) and TLX conversions (which is far more complex).

The problem with conversions is really 2 fold; quality concerns & sharing concerns. If a user takes it upon his/herself to go whole-hog with an entire conversion solo, then we would of course evaluate the results (we'd be silly not to). That said, it needs to be up to our various standards because it would essentially be going back into the core catalog. What we don't want to do is aggrevate a well meaning converter after they've done a ton of work only for us to say, "well this or that needs to be fixed or needs work before we can except the material". Moreover; with enough people working on conversions that quickly turns into a very real strain on our limited time/resources and ability to vet various conversions for specific quality benchmarks.

In respect to collaborative conversions, it basically opens the door to illegal sharing with others who may or may not own the model set slated for conversion. One user might start the conversion but without some way of ensuring additional users own the core modelset, you end up in a situation where people are swapping files back and forth with no real transparency at all. Essentially we'd be green lighting an illegal file sharing network of our own work. We saw early evidence for that provided to us by a few trusted souls before any policies were set. In our view it was just the beginning of a more endemic problem. There's ways around that but again it boils down to moderating a very complicated puzzle and it would put a massive strain on our resources.

As I said, I created a draft guideline for collaborative conversions but even our betacrew was in agreement that its just too complicated to manage. That's not to say one day we won't make it happen but for now the simplest course of action is to keep things "official".

All of that said; if you've taken a conversion across the finish line previous to this policy, please don't hesitate to send it our way for a look. If it meets our benchmarks we'll compensate completed solo conversions with free stuff.

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